Thursday 5 November 2015

Lip-sync madness



Yesterday I discovered something new and whacky that only the Internet could have created: I was really taken by a story on SBS news last night about a hugely popular Filippino show, Eat Bulaga! The story was difficult to follow because of its oddness but here's my attempt to share it.


There exists a website called Dubsmash where we as members of a participatory audience can film ourselves lipsyncing to a variety of provided soundclips, or from a song imported from our smartphone music collection. A Filippino twenty-something, Maine Mendoza - you may know her as Queen of Dubsmash of YouTube fame, was so popular in the Philippines that the producers of Eat Bulaga! wrote a part for the YouTube star, extending her Internet identity to her TV character: "...she delivers no dialogue although she lipsynchs songs or lines from movies, etc. prepared for her by the writers the night before" (Philstar). If that's not whacky enough, her TV character, Yaya Dub, develops a romance with another character "via split-screen, with Alden at the studio and Yaya Dub out in the streets" (Philstar). This romance has been so watched and followed that the producers bowed to public pressure and wrote into the script a meeting of the two lovers.
There is at least one fan site, currently with 130,000 followers, developing the story, imagining the romance - there are Photoshopped images posted of the lovers together. Check it out on Facebook.
I love this aspect of the Internet, an active audience who, through things such as fan sites, exert influence over the producers and get their say. These guys are changing the storyline.
And here's our go at Dubsmash.
https://youtu.be/VOeaolXfNMg